i like broken houses a little too much.

         shattered glass rotting floorings
         dust and cobwebs and echoings
         so you can nearly hear the laughter and the cries
         of her old residents
         and how she's kept them in an ivory box
         all those years
         in her basement
         while everything else ******* falls to pieces
         and there's nobody to mend a single thing.

         maybe nothing's the same after hearing
         a hospital hall's echo and how he only
         tries to get away from the screams and kisses
         and the pristine courtains barerly let light in
         and he's a broken mess that hasn't been abandoned
         but the impending damnation breaks him
         and kills others
         death resides but so does life
         and which one is stronger

         and poetry cannot fix the world
         or fix her or fix him or anybody
         and buildings should be buildings and a dust-covered door
         should not be a call for my curiosity and i should not
         mark my fingerprints on it because my sweaty palms
         will make her shriek awake and believe
         someone's finally going to take care of her
         while someone else then walks away
         and leaves her walls stained

         i feel the allure of it somehow because
         there's no more ******* glass to stain break scratch
         within her so i must find some in me some that can contain her
         and contain me i'm falling
         fallingfallingfelldownandwhereaminow
         and hospital halls are nothing but white and sad and a cemetery
         that's being pieced together and it smells of cleaning products
         but the abandoned place has harbored entire lives
         so maybe i'd rather bleed out at an abandoned
         house without glass
         than next to a graveyard in the make

people tell me i should stop thinking so much.

It’s a dead man’s farm that flows row after row
A strange sick decaying crop that does not grow
But spouts stone statues and musty monuments
Digging dirt of different quantities and qualities
Slightly stiff and dark to light brown ground under
Layers of soft white light reflecting wet snow
They rip the frozen ground apart just for me
Tentatively at first then with a fiercer force
Deeper and deeper into the well of hell
The dark chamber which carries my broken shell
Those plots of stagnant crops postponing their rot
Worms inching and struggling but never piercing
Never startled nor fearing the truth that is searing
I am a planted seed never meant to grow
Potential never allowed to flow and show
Life as the cycling gift it truly is
The farm expands men multiplied by women
Children and elderly corpses cut too closely
No corn, milk, eggs, beans, bacon, wheat, or honey
Just lanes of dead men farming for nothingness

Bury me in an unmarked grave
When it comes to be my day
The only marker I need
Are the ones I leave

No stone do I require
To show I have passed
I'll be remembered by those I inspire
That is how I want my memory to last

I walk through the groves and the singing treetops
silence enrobing every sound, in these places where
people lay still living, under the ground,
for here the grass grows the greenest
and the trees all stand tall, yes
they are gone, but they did not long fall.

The ravens survey
The gated community,
Scouring for a meal.
They swoop low,
Caw and crow,
Conversing in melody.
The repast dead
Are safely laid
Beneath their carrion beaks;
I, in grief
Shoo them off
Your bronzed memory:
Then I pause
To recall
The flight ahead of me.

There's a little graveyard
just outside of town
The grass is overgrown
The trees are dead and brown
For as long as I remember
No one's been up there
And from the look of the dead flora
Nobody really cares

It's about a mile east of here
The fence is almost gone
It's never going to get mistaken
for good old forest lawn
There's not a stone of granite
Most are white, or made of wood
There are spots among the headstones
where others may have stood

I thought it was a potter's field
for those destitute and poor
but, upon close examination
i have discovered so much more
The names go back before the war
The civil one I mean
Back before the Pilgrims came
back to sixteen seventeen

There is no history of them at all
The names aren't from this town
But, there they are on ancient stone
Buried in our ground
It's really something different
The feeling of knowing who they were
Were they here in search of riches
Or chasing down the wealth of fur

I've checked all the stones still standing
Two hundred thirty one in all
that includes the stones rough hewn
left leaning by the wall
The town itself was started
Back in eighteen forty two
So compared to those here lying
The town is fairly new

The graveyard is neglected
There's no body here at rest
from since the town was started
laid in this hallowed nest
There's crosses and carved angels
Whole families as well
With this much soul protection
They will never go to hell

No one knows about them
But in this field the dead still lie
About a mile east of Vickston
With the road, cars passing by
No one will go up there
To tend those who came before
So, they'll sleep soft here forever
And dream of life forever more